The young and inexperienced Independents and Democrats giving up their guns could account for the drop in gun accidents. Thanks guys, you're doing us gun owners a great favor by ceasing to skew the number.

The young and inexperienced Independents and Democrats giving up their guns could account for the drop in gun accidents. Thanks guys, you're doing us gun owners a great favor

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Let the record show that the "Independent" classification (a significant source of Republican votes, especially younger ones) went with the "Democrats", and was rejected by the rightwingies present. And notice that few people actually "give up" their guns, barring financial emergency - that's not a graph of households getting rid of their guns, in the US.

Let the record show that the "Independent" classification (a significant source of Republican votes, especially younger ones) went with the "Democrats", and was rejected by the rightwingies present. And notice that few people actually "give up" their guns, barring financial emergency - that's not a graph of households getting rid of their guns, in the US.

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Whether they gave up or quit acquiring doesn't change the trend, not the effect on gun accidents apparently.

Whether they gave up or quit acquiring doesn't change the trend, not the effect on gun accidents apparently.

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As long as we are past the notion that the slipshod "conceal carry" requirements explain the trend, we might as well take a look at what does: the possibility that jumps from the data is that fewer guns are lying around the house where children can get at them, and fewer are being carried and used for anything. Increasingly, young folks don't own them, old folks pile them up in collections and take one or two of them hunting occasionally - the chance of accident goes way down when the gun isn't being loaded and fired and cleaned and so forth.

Another obvious possibility is that suicides, by far the largest source of fatality by gun, are being more accurately counted - the inexplicable gun "accident" is now being correctly labeled more often. In such a large population of events as gun suicide, even a small proportional change in that evaluation can have large effects on the statistics of other categories.